AAFCO Meeting begins Thursday August 10, 2017

It is that time of year again – AAFCO meeting time. Consumers can listen to the meeting online or by calling into a conference number.

This AAFCO meeting is held in Bellevue, Washington – opening session begins at 8 AM Thursday August 10, 2017. AAFCO – the Association of American Feed Control Officials – is an independent corporation/organization. Members consist of representatives from State Department of Agriculture and FDA. AAFCO writes (and owns) the legal definitions of all pet food/animal feed ingredients and writes ‘model bills’ that are often accepted as state law governing pet food/animal feed. AAFCO allows ‘stakeholder’ participation in the form of advisors to various committees and in the form of a open microphone allowing anyone in attendance to voice opinion at the two public meetings a year. Stakeholders consist of pet food/animal feed manufacturers, ingredient providers, and consumer representatives.

Public meetings are held twice a year (January and August), but there are many more meetings happening throughout the year for AAFCO members and stakeholder representatives via webinars. As example many, many webinar meetings have taken place for the Pet Food Label Modernization working group since the last public meeting in January. The results of these webinar meetings will be made public at this upcoming meeting. (In other words, information that I am not allowed to share with consumers from the webinar meetings will be made public during this meeting in Washington.)

The two most significant sessions at AAFCO for pet food consumers are the Ingredient Definitions Committee and the Pet Food Committee – both of these meetings taking place on Friday.

The Ingredient Definitions Committee meeting might disclose some of that information that I have been unable to alert consumers of. One item of interest is listed as “5) Discussions: a) Status on high profile ingredients” on the agenda.

Later the same day is the Pet Food Committee which could have some ‘interesting’ discussion for consumers to hear as well. During this session FDA is supposed to announce the feed/food labeling disclosure – requesting it be added to the Pet Food Label Modernization working group duties. The goal would be for the Pet Food Label Modernization group (of which myself and Mollie Morrissette are members) to write the future label requirement law (model bill). FDA was in full support of this label requirement during our meeting with them in June, we remain hopeful the agency states this support publicly at AAFCO. We will also be presenting the consumer signatures to the petition in support of this feed/food labeling requirement to the committee. (If you have not added your name to this petition – your name is needed. Click Here to sign. Deadline is Tuesday August 8, 2017.)

To view the full request FDA asked consumer advocates to submit on the feed/food labeling requirement, Click Here. Then click on the PDF icon to open the document.